Quebec 2022 Election

[Benjamin Frank]

Other than the Conservatives in the Quebec City region (I still think this is a protest that will melt away as the election gets closer) is any party other than CAQ likely to win any riding outside of Montreal, Laval or the Outaouais?  I realize if not, that would mean the P.Q would be shut out.

[Benjamin Frank]

Mainstreet is doing daily tracking polls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Quebec_general_election

The PCQ has dropped nearly five points.

[Benjamin Frank]

I hope nobody minds me asking basic questions here, but I've always found the Montreal 'suburbs', the South Shore and the North Shore, confusing as a region. (I'm already aware the the city of Montreal does not include the entire island of Montreal, although it did briefly.)

Would it be accurate to say that other than Laval and Longueuil, the South Shore and the North Shore are rural and aren't really suburbs per se? Are there other smaller but still  suburban cities in the South Shore and the North Shore?

The Montreal 'suburbs' seem to be very different than the Vancouver suburbs or the Toronto suburbs.

[Benjamin Frank]

Apologies if it’s already been mentioned and I skimmed over it, but what specific districts do the PCQ have the best chance of winning?

I don't know if this has been mentioned already, but the PCQ seems to be focusing on the english speaking vote more than I would have thought. In the debate yesterday, if not earlier, the PCQ came out against Bill 96 with Éric Duhaime showing a sign just saying 'no' (I.E in English only.)

I don't know if this was mentioned either before, but the PCQ is running a fairly high profile candidate in the Montreal riding of D'Arcy McGee.

Longtime Liberal Bonnie Feigenbaum joins Quebec Conservatives
https://globalnews.ca/news/9054060/liberal-bonnie-feigenbaum-joins-quebec-conservatives/

Voters in the D’Arcy McGee riding will see a familiar name on the ballot this fall, but beside a different party. Former Hampstead city councillor and longtime Liberal Bonnie Feigenbaum is running for the Conservative Party of Quebec.

The 53-year-old candidate says the Liberals’ initial support for Bill 96 was the final straw.

“We can’t trust the Liberals. They tell us one thing and then once they were in power, they go, ‘Sorry, got to do something else, you have to understand,'” said Feigenbaum.

D'Arcy McGee was held by Equality Party Leader Rober Libman from 1989-1994, so this riding has a past history of voting for English protesters.

[Benjamin Frank]

Quite an alliance there. Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers, people brainwashed by Quebec City trash radio and now Angryphones.

Is calling an English speaking person in Quebec an 'Angryphone' any different than calling a Francophone a 'frog'?

[Benjamin Frank]

Quite an alliance there. Trump supporters, anti-vaxxers, people brainwashed by Quebec City trash radio and now Angryphones.

Is calling an English speaking person in Quebec an 'Angryphone' any different than calling a Francophone a 'frog'?

The Angryphone word is used to describe Quebec anglophones who refuses to engage with Francophones in any way and are perpetually angry at things (the same ones who voted for the Equality Party).

Nonsense, it's a way to dismiss the legitimate concerns of an entire group of people through dehumanizing them.

What 'engagement' is there other than the Francohpones saying 'what additional rights that you have can we take away now?"

Using the term 'angryphone' should be as unacceptable here as using the term 'frog' to describe Quebecers or using the N- word.

[Benjamin Frank]

It's the Francophone nationalists/zenophobes who are the angriest/most bigoted. Look at Premier Legault having to apologize yesterday for referring to immigrants as 'bringing violence to Quebec.'

Quebec politics has for a long time been about federalism vs. separatism.  I disagee with Eric Duhaime on most things, but to the degree that he brings a debate in Francohpone Quebec on collectivism vs. individualism, that is a good thing.

[Benjamin Frank]

Pontiac would be a big surprise. It would be a CAQ dreams to sweep the Outaouais but so far I think most think PLQ will hold. I haven't heard of it being a PCQ target or if they have a lot of members. I've seen federal Pontiac had the most votes in Quebec in the federal leadership election. I don't know if CPC tranlsates to PCQ, if there is PCQ media support like there could be for Poilievre (maybe not if some listen to Ottawa stations).

In 2018 PLQ got 54% and CAQ 20%. PLQ would need to lose half its vote, CAQ only make small gain ot not at all so PCQ would need near 30% to win.

The language most spoken at home in the riding in 2016 was 52% French, 38% English and the rest multiple languages or other languages. I imagine English is higher now because the latest census showed English gaining in Gatineau, people moving from Ontario and a lot settling in Aylmer.

There is a list of ridings to watch in the Montreal area (mostly PLQ potential losses).
https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-election-ridings-to-watch-in-the-montreal-region

The pecentage for parties on the map in the article is projection from poll aggregator, not past results.

Is that people moving from Ottawa to the Outaouais? Is that for cheaper housing prices?

[Benjamin Frank]

https://twitter.com/MainStResearch/status/1569757806210830336

[Benjamin Frank]

Anyone able to do up the results for the 17 regions as be interested in those.

I printed up the wiki of the candidate listing and I went to the CBC results and I wrote down all the numbers, but I have to find a calculator.

Some of the wiki ridings in regions were a bit of a surprise to me, I don't know if those are the official divisions (like St Hyacinthe as part of one of the Montreal suburban regions.)

[Benjamin Frank]

I didn't use a calculator, so this is from just eyeballing (but I'm good at doing arithmetic in my head), but this is the range of seats based on less than 10% victories.

CAQ: 78-100
Liberal: 15-27
QS: 7-14
P.Q: 1-5
Con: 0-3

1.CAQ could have ended up with not many more ridings than they won in the last election, but the polling was also correct that they could have got to 100 ridings (not that polling is necessarily needed for that.)

2.The Liberals could have ended up with nearly as many ridings as they won in the last election.

3.QS could have reached official party status, but did pretty well.

4.PQ had a big win in Matane-Matapedia so they wouldn't have been shut out, but they weren't even competitive in ridings they won in 2018. One of their five competitive ridings was probably a result of their candidate there being former NDP M.P Pierre Nantel.

5.I think it's Frontenac a riding in the same region as Beauce where the Conservatives lost by less than 10%.

On the Island of Montreal the results were:
Liberal: 16
QS: 8
CAQ: 2
PQ: 1

The PQ leader won the Montreal riding of Camile Lauren resulting in the only CAQ incumbent defeat.

So, off the island of Montreal the results were:
CAQ: 88
Liberals: 5
QS: 3
PQ: 2

4 of the five Liberal wins were in the Montreal suburbs in either Laval or the South Shore. The only Liberal win in 'the regions' was Pontiac. The only other riding they lost by less than 10% in 'the regions' was Hull.

2 of the 3 QS wins off of the Island of Montreal were in Quebec City and the other was in Sherbrooke. I think QS clearly has a problem similar to all left wing parties of not having much support in smaller towns and rural areas (with the exception of more isolated rural areas- like the Rouyn-Noranda riding QS held from 2018-2022.)

[Benjamin Frank]

One thing I don't fully understand about the immigration debate in Quebec is that there is no shortage of French speakers around the world who I'm sure would like to come to Quebec and I'm sure would be good additions to Quebec.

I'm thinking in present of French speakers in Burkina Faso and Haiti.

[Benjamin Frank]

One thing I don't fully understand about the immigration debate in Quebec is that there is no shortage of French speakers around the world who I'm sure would like to come to Quebec and I'm sure would be good additions to Quebec.

I'm thinking in present of French speakers in Burkina Faso and Haiti.

That's because the language issue in the context of immigration is in part a cover for something else.

I like to think that isn't the case.

[Benjamin Frank]

Irrespective of the reasons for Quebec's unwillingness to accept more than 50,000 immigrants a year, I think Quebecers need to be aware of and accept all the consequences of that.

So, a couple caveats:
1.Quebec, of course, can not prevent immigrants (or any other Canadian) who moves to anotehr province first to relocate to Quebec. They can, as part of their language schooling policies try to make it difficult for English speaking people to move to Quebec, but I think most English speakers who move to Quebec want their children to learn French as quickly as possible anyway.

2.There is obviously opposition to immigration, especially 350,000 immigrants a year outside of Quebec, in the rest of Canada as well. And, certainly one can oppose such a large number of immigrants a year without being racist.

In regards to the consequences, there was debate in the election that Quebec needs immigrants for economic purposes, there are job shortages, but there is also the other consideration.

In 40 years, Quebec has gone from having 75 of 282 seats in the House of Commons (about 27%) to 78 of 338 (soon to be 341 I think) about 23%.

This decline as a share of Canadian population will result after the next election of British Columbia and Alberta combined having more seats in the House of Commons than Quebec.

Quebecers need to understand that this is the consequence of their opposition to immigration, that if present trends continue, in about 30 years, they will likely comprise less than 20% of the Canadian population. They need to understand that this is the result of their choice and that they can't expect the rest of Canada to give them any kind of special protection in The House of Commons to make up for this choice.

When you make a choice, you need to accept all the consequences, both good and bad.

[Benjamin Frank]

Right now the opposition parties and pundits are squabbling over official party status, which is nominally 12 seats or 20% but in practice is decided case by case. In 2018 Legault granted it to QS and PQ, supported by the PLQ. Now QS and PQ are loudly demanding it but Anglade doesn't want to unless Legault commits to electoral reform, which he flatly refused in his press conference last week. Grits are saying they made a mistake agreeing in 2018 because it gave GND a higher profile and allowed Legault to run against him. My view is GND getting more coverage is a Grit problem.

Anglade's leadership is not being contested right now, though Marc Tanguay (Charest's former party president) wants to be interim leader while not doing anything to make it happen. Riqzy and Fortin are loyal to Anglade. Some outside Grits floated Labeaume, who sounded ambivalent when the Journal asked him. I highly doubt he would do it unless drafted and his profile is similar to Legault as a nationalist businessman-pol in his 60s who voted yes twice. Marois got 95% in her post-2008 leadership review and we know how that turned out, but leadership coups are strictly an establishment thing in the PLQ, like everything else. Plus no one seriously thinks Tanguay, Riqzy, Fortin or some LPC figure would do better.

Probably if there's any "fresh start' hope for the Liberals, it'd be if a federal MP made a jump to the provincial leadership--not sure if there's anyone with that gumption at this point.

And the QS thing is interesting; because as much as some observers might seek to project an big-city urban vs suburban/rural left vs right dynamic upon Quebec politics, it doesn't work because the Quebec Libs have always been at least as much of an "establishment" party, and a lot of their Anglo strongholds are scarcely the sort that'd be deemed "left" most anywhere else.  Thus except when it comes to self-preservation, there hasn't exactly been the climate for "unite the left under the Liberals" in QS strongholds, not least because a lot of said strongholds used to be PQ strongholds and the big-tent Liberalism might as well be a unite-the-*centre-right* reflex, much as it has been in Lib/NDP marginal seats across Canada.  Thus in practice, Montreal's like a London where the Kingston/Richmond Lib Dem reflex rules the establishment-Anglo roost (while bleeding into the Allos elsewhere) and CAQ is a Franco version of a coarse "Essex Man Tory" easterly element...

Maybe Joel Lightbound.